The Ministry of Agriculture and the Taiwanese armed forces are to hold a joint natural disaster response drill in Hualien later this month, in the first collaboration of its kind, the ministry said.
Officials from the Agency of Rural Development and Soil and Water Conservation made the announcement on Thursday at a news briefing marking the start of Soil and Water Conservation Month.
The agency plans to conduct 40 exercises across Taiwan throughout the month to bolster resilience against the growing threat of extreme weather events, Deputy Director-General Wang Chin-lun (王晉倫) said.
Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
In the Hualien drill, the military would take a leading role, focusing on training local authorities to carry out large evacuations in the event of simultaneous flooding and earthquakes, he said.
If the drill proves successful, the agency would consider scaling up the exercises and expanding them to other jurisdictions, he added.
The agency also held an award ceremony to honor volunteer emergency responders with a decade of service or more.
Among the recipients was nearly 70-year-old Fan Heng-chih (范姮枝), who became a volunteer after Typhoon Morakot ravaged Kaohsiung’s Jiasian District (甲仙) in 2009. She recalled how the storm triggered landslides that caused one hill to collapse into another, permanently reshaping the district’s terrain.
Fan urged greater public awareness of natural disaster risks, adding that all six hills in her district remain vulnerable to mudslides if another major storm were to hit.
The graying of the agency’s volunteer emergency responder team is almost as alarming as the threat of natural disasters, she said, adding that a crew of three volunteers often has a combined age of more than 200 years.
People of all ages and genders should consider joining the volunteer force because natural disasters do not discriminate, she said.
Chen Shen-che (陳聖哲), a former agency employee who is 70 years old, said he joined the volunteer team after retiring from the civil service 10 years ago.
He said he is grateful for the chance to apply his experience, adding that helping people evacuate from dangerous homes is an important part of a volunteer’s duties.
Citing an example, Chen said he once stayed from 9am to 3am the following day trying to persuade a 90-year-old man to leave his home, ultimately succeeding after hours of patient conversation.
The public needs to be more aware of their community’s disaster risks to make informed decisions about when evacuation is necessary, he said.
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